Two prominent Americans held captive by Russia — Wall Street Journal reporter Ivan Garshkovich and former Marine Paul Whelan — will return to the United States as part of a massive, multi-country prisoner exchange. The State Department announced Thursday.
The swap would free 16 prisoners, including German nationals as well as Russian political prisoners. In exchange, eight Russian prisoners in the United States, Germany, Poland, Norway and Slovenia will be released.
The swap marked the largest prisoner exchange with Russia since the Cold War and was a byproduct of it Year of discussion. What happened — one of the most complicated prisoner swaps in history — is significant, though it is unlikely to signal a serious improvement in relations between the United States and Russia, as it continues its invasion of Ukraine.
“The relationship is still at a nascent stage and will lack any fundamental change in Russia’s war on Ukraine,” Adam Lenton, a Wake Forest University professor who studies Russian politics, told Vox.
Who are Ivan Gershkovich and Paul Whelan? And other notable people are being released?
Gershkovich, who was captured in Russia in 2023 on a reporting trip, was the first American journalist to be arrested in the country since the Cold War. At the time, he was detained over claims he was helping the CIA gather intelligence on a Russian military equipment manufacturer, allegations he and the US government strongly deny.
As Jonathan Guyer explained for Vox at the time, his detention was a significant blow to what little press freedom remains in Russia:
It is true that Russian authorities have often harassed and surveilled international journalists in the country. But they were generally a somewhat more protected class than the Russian journalists who encountered it grave danger. The assumption was that it was necessary to have some foreign journalists in Russia if Russia wanted its correspondents to have credentials in the United States and Europe. Now, amid Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the rules are changing…
Whelan, who is a citizen of the United States, England, Ireland and Canada, was charged with espionage in 2018 after traveling to Moscow for a wedding. He also denied these allegations.
Both men were convicted in closed-door trials and sentenced to 16 years in 2024 and 2020 respectively. The United States has designated both men as “wrongfully detained” — a term the government uses to describe Americans it believes are being held abroad on unfounded charges and for whom it is actively working to release.
Others released include:
- Vladimir Kara-Murza, a prominent Russian dissident and a dual British and Russian citizen known for his vocal criticism of the government. Kara-Muza is a Pulitzer Prize winner for her published comments on the issue and previously served a 25-year sentence for sedition.
- Alsou Kurmasheva, a US-Russian journalist accused of spreading false information, edited a book about Russia’s war on Ukraine, and was previously sentenced to six and a half years in prison.
Detainees returned to Russia in exchange include convicted hackers and a convicted operative known for his ties to the Kremlin. The most prominent among them is Vadim Krasikov — a Professional killer who killed a former Chechen rebel in broad daylight in Berlin in 2019 as parents and their children watched. As the Wall Street Journal Coverage reports on the return of their own reporterKrasikov was “the person the Russian president wanted to bring home.”
Experts believe it is important to distinguish between people released in Russia and those released by other countries. “Putin wanted to bring home a Russian assassin, one he knew personally, and other spies, who worked for the Russian intelligence service, to show that their government would try to bring them home if they were caught. The US government and its allies are holding innocent people hostage in Russian prisons. wanted to free,” Brian Taylor, a Syracuse political scientist who specializes in the study of Russian politics, told Vox.
Why is this important?
The scale of the prisoner swap is significant and has ensured that several journalists and political activists are able to secure their freedom after imprisonment.
“Today is a joyous day for the safe return of our colleague Ivan Gershkovichwho left a Russian plane in the Turkish capital of Ankara some time ago as part of a prisoner exchange with Russia,” Wall Street Journal editor-in-chief Emma Tucker said in a statement.
“The fraud case against him presents many important issues. Strike against freedom of the press. A warning to foreign journalists covering the Kremlin. A new tension in America’s relationship with Russia,” he added. “But at the center of it was Ivan, our 32-year-old Moscow correspondent from New Jersey, who loved to cook and support Arsenal Football Club, and who loved being in Russia and reporting.”
Russia has taken an increasingly repressive approach to the press and political dissent under President Vladimir Putin, with Russia willing to detain individuals including Gershkovich, Kara-Murza and Kurmasheva. As Vox’s Ellen Ionnes reports, the Kremlin has supported “Strict laws It is against what it refers to as fake news and discrediting the war effort, “all of which are intended to silence critics.”
And while U.S. lawmakers praised the exchange, they also noted that hostage-taking (Including possibly Gershkovich) was a troubling tactic used by Russia to gain political advantage and facilitate the release of Russians detained abroad.
“These arrests are an example of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s cunning ‘hostage diplomacy,’ in which he detains foreign nationals to use as leverage against their home governments to attack the rules-based international system,” Sen. Chris Coons (D-DE) said. said in a statement.
As the Wall Street Journal explainedThe United States has increasingly faced the reality and moral dilemma of freeing convicted Russians in exchange for wrongfully detained Americans:
To respond to Putin and other hostage-taking dictators, the State Department staffed an entire office of about two dozen employees, headed by a former Green Beret who travels around Europe and the Middle East to seek out captive businesses that might free Gershkovich and others.
The prisoner swap indicates that the two countries still have some diplomatic channels, although it does little to improve hostilities between the countries as Russia continues its war with Ukraine, which the United States has strongly opposed.
